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Some important points are raised in this post over at Up@Night about Peter Railton’s Dewey Lecture. I’ve also been noticing that Railton didn’t just give a talk about depression in philosophy. He used depression as an example while making a bigger point. And it’s occurred to me to be concerned that, as a discipline, it is all too easy for us to hear only the elements of Railton’s message that are most comfortable for us to hear, and/or relatively easy for us to act upon without challenging too much of the status quo. Railton’s lecture came in an…

View image | gettyimages.com The bookshelves of the world abound with tomes on self-help. Many of these profess to help people with various emotional woes, such as sadness, and make vague promises about happiness. Interestingly enough, philosophers have long been in the business of offering advice on how to be happy. Or at least not too sad. Each spring semester I teach Modern Philosophy and cover our good dead friend Spinoza. In addition to an exciting career as a lens grinder, he also manage to avoid being killed by an assassin. However, breathing in all that glass dust seems to have…

[New Entry by Jonathan Weisberg on March 2, 2015.] Formal epistemology explores knowledge and reasoning using "formal" tools, tools from math and logic. For example, a formal epistemologist might use probability theory to explain how scientific reasoning works. Or she might use modal logic to defend a particular theory of knowledge. The questions that drive formal epistemology are often the same as those that drive "informal" epistemology. What is knowledge, and how is it different from mere opinion? What separates...

[Revised entry by Michael Tooley on March 3, 2015. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, alternate.html, notes.html] The epistemic question posed by evil is whether the world contains undesirable states of affairs that provide the basis for an argument that makes it unreasonable to believe in the existence of God....

[New Entry by Jonathan Weisberg on March 2, 2015.] Formal epistemology explores knowledge and reasoning using "formal" tools, tools from math and logic. For example, a formal epistemologist might use probability theory to explain how scientific reasoning works. Or she might use modal logic to defend a particular theory of knowledge. The questions that drive formal epistemology are often the same as those that drive "informal" epistemology. What is knowledge, and how is it different from mere opinion? What separates...

[Revised entry by Mary Louise Gill on March 2, 2015. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, notes.html] The Sophist and Statesman are late Platonic dialogues, whose relative dates are established by their stylistic similarity to the Laws, a work that was apparently still "on the wax" at the time of Plato's death (Diogenes Laertius 3.37). These dialogues are important in exhibiting Plato's views on method and metaphysics after he criticized his own most famous contribution to the history of philosophy, the theory of...

[Revised entry by Allan Franklin and Slobodan Perovic on February 27, 2015. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, app7.html] Physics, and natural science in general, is a reasonable enterprise based on valid experimental evidence, criticism, and rational discussion. It provides us with knowledge of the physical world, and it is experiment that provides the evidence that grounds this knowledge. Experiment plays many roles in science. One of its important roles is to test theories and to provide the basis for scientific knowledge.[1]...

[New Entry by Michael Brownstein on February 26, 2015.] "Implicit bias" is a term of art referring to relatively unconscious and relatively automatic features of prejudiced judgment and social behavior. While psychologists in the field of "implicit social cognition" study "implicit attitudes" toward consumer products, self-esteem, food, alcohol, political values, and more, the most striking and well-known research has focused on implicit attitudes toward members of socially stigmatized groups, such as African-Americans, women, and the LGBTQ community.[1] For...

View image | gettyimages.com It is just a matter of time before the first serious accident involving a driverless car or an autonomous commercial drone. As such, it is well worth considering the legal and moral aspects of responsibility. If companies that are likely to be major players in the autonomous future, such as Google and Amazon, have the wisdom of foresight, they are already dropping stacks of cash on lawyers who are busily creating the laws-to-be regarding legal responsibility for accidents and issues involving such machines. The lobbyists employed by these companies will presumably…

View image | gettyimages.com The bookshelves of the world abound with tomes on self-help. Many of these profess to help people with various emotional woes, such as sadness, and make vague promises about happiness. Interestingly enough, philosophers have long been in the business of offering advice on how to be happy. Or at least not too sad. Each spring semester I teach Modern Philosophy and cover our good dead friend Spinoza. In addition to an exciting career as a lens grinder, he also manage to avoid being killed by an assassin. However, breathing in all that glass dust seems to have…

(Photo credit: Wikipedia) While there is an established history of superhero characters having their ethnicity or gender changed, each specific episode tends to create a small uproar (and not just among the fanfolk). For example, Nick Fury was changed from white to black (with Samuel Jackson playing the character in the movies). As another example, a woman took on the role of Thor. I am using “ethnicity” here rather than “race” for the obvious reason that in comic book reality humans are one race, just as Kryptonians and Kree are races. Some of the complaints about such changes are…

The Kindle version of my book about the arguments against same sex-marriage will be free on Amazon (all countries) from February 23, 2015 to February 27, 2015. Here is the link to the Amazon.com (USA) version. Here is the link to the UK version. My Amazon Author Page My Paizo Page My DriveThru RPG Page Follow Me on Twitter

View image | gettyimages.com The Keystone XL Pipeline has become a powerful symbol in American politics. Those that oppose it can take it as a symbol of all that is wrong: environmental dangers, global warming, big corporations, and other such evils. Those who support it can take it as a symbol of all that is good: jobs, profits, big corporations and other such goods. While I am no expert when it comes to pipelines, I thought it would be worthwhile to present a concise discussion of the matter. The main substantial objections against the pipeline are environmental. One concern is that…

Is Plato right when he says that ignorance is the source of all evil? I live in the American south, and a large number of the people here are, in my opinion, ignorant; and i recently got into an argument with a class mate of mine who said that ignorance is bliss. At least half of the people at my school have his attitude, they don't care about their education and they prefer to not deal with things that might broaden their horizons. If ignorance is the source of evil, does that mean that my area is a hot spot for evil, or is my definition of evil wrong? Response from: Allen Stairs Let's start…

Is empathy as a moral guide overrated? Why, for example, if empathy is considered such a powerful force for moral good, was it unable to prevent the American slavery system? Response from: Eddy Nahmias Some people think empathy is overrated, including psychologist Paul Bloom, who offers a nice summary of his views here: http://bostonreview.net/forum/paul-bloom-against-empathy There are some responses to him as well, including one by philosopher Jesse Prinz, who has also argued that empathy is overrated: http://cultureofempathy.com/references/Experts/Jesse-Prinz.htm Personally, I think much…

Dear Philosophers, Can someone recommend a biography of Baruch Spinoza? Thank you Response from: Eddy Nahmias I haven't read Rebecca Goldstein's biography of Spinoza, but she's a great writer (with PhD in philosophy) and my dad liked it. I can't vouch for how thorough it is, but it will give you a sense of his philosophical views as well. http://www.amazon.com/Betraying-Spinoza-Renegade-Modernity-Encounters/dp/0805211594

I would like to know if duty implies value. If I have the duty to take care of my daughter, does that imply that it is better that I take care of her than that I don't? If two people promise each other to meet that evening, is it then better (at least, according to their promises) that they meet? If I have the duty to join my country's army, is it better that I do than that I don't? Thank you. Response from: Charles Taliaferro Great questions. Many philosophers recognize that we have multiple duties which sometimes conflict. And they also recognize different degrees of complexity that come…

I am a scientist with very strong desire for personal growth.I acknowledge the undeniable practical values of science in making better world. However, I am wondering how being a scientist would contribute to my own growth and self-actualization.(regardless of financial or social gain of being a scientist). Also is it worthy to put my life on practicing science which mostly involve in a very narrow research area. I mean if putting so much time and energy on such tiny bit of knowledge is really good and in accordance with my ultimate goal of being self-actualized? Response from: Allen Stairs I…

MOVING TO FRONT FROM FEBRUARY 25--AN INTERESTING DISCUSSION IN THE COMMMENTS--SEE ESP. #25 FROM A COLLEAGUE OF MINE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS Alan Patten, the editor of PPA and a professor of Politics at Princeton, kindly offered to...

This book, edited by Steven Cahn, contains essays by a number of prominent American philosophers, all past "Dewey Lectures" at the APA. Some of the essays are quite revealing, perhaps not always in ways their authors realize. I will be...

Readers of Ethics Ethic might be interested in Princeton Alumni Weekly’s special issue this month on the brain, which includes a Q&A with me about the ethics of neuroscience. Here is the link to the issue: http://paw.princeton.edu/issues/2015/01/07/ And here’s the link to my Q&A: http://paw.princeton.edu/issues/2015/01/07/pages/6307/index.xml Do check them out!

University of Colorado Boulder, October 22-24, 2015 Proposal deadline: Friday, February 13, 2015 Program Co-Chairs: Lilly Goren (Carroll University) and Peter Josephson (St. Anselm College) The Association for Political Theory (APT) invites proposals for its thirteenth annual conference, to be held October 22-24, 2015, at the University of Colorado Boulder. Proposals from faculty members, independent […]

Readers of Ethics Etc might be interested in Newsweek’s cover story in December entitled “Planet Reboot: Fighting Climate Change With Geoengineering,” in which they interviewed me about whether human engineering may be less risky than geoengineering as a means of mitigating the effects of climate change. The online version can be found here: http://www.newsweek.com/2014/12/12/can-geoengineering-save-earth-28912 4.html

In keeping with its mission of encouraging and recognizing excellence in philosophy, The Marc Sanders Foundation seeks to highlight the importance of ongoing support for the work of younger scholars. As part of this commitment, the Foundation has dedicated resources to an ongoing essay competition, designed to promote excellent research and writing in metaethics on […]

There are two paradoxes of satisfaction, and they are of different kinds. The classic satisfaction paradox is a version of Grelling’s: does ‘does not satisfy itself’ satisfy itself? The Unsatisfied paradox finds a predicate, P, such that Px if and only if x does not satisfy that predicate: paradox results for any x. The two are intuitively different as their predicates have different paradoxical extensions. Analysis reduces each paradoxical argument to differing rule sets, wherein their respective pathologies lie. Having different pathologies, they are paradoxes of different…

Zombies are unconscious objects with conscious physical micro-duplicates. If zombies are possible then physicalism (the thesis that the physical determines the mental) is false. It has been argued that zombies are possible if conceivable for an agent with ideal rationality. At any rate, they are possible only if so conceivable. This essay uses a mereological constraint to highlight the fine-grained differences between actually conscious physical objects and certain of their actually consciousness-incapable proper parts. These mereological considerations form the basis of an argument by…

The first part of the paper is devoted to surveying the remarks that philosophers and mathematicians such as Maddy, Hardy, Gowers, and Zeilberger have made about mathematical depth. The second part is devoted to the question of whether we can make the notion precise by a more formal proof-theoretical approach. The idea of measuring depth by the depth and bushiness of the proof is considered, and compared to the related notion of the depth of a chess combination.

In his argument for the possibility of knowledge of spatial objects, in the Transcendental Deduction of the B-version of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant makes a crucial distinction between space as "form of intuition" and space as "formal intuition." The traditional interpretation regards the distinction between the two notions as reflecting a distinction between indeterminate space and determinations of space by the understanding, respectively. By contrast, a recent influential reading has argued that the two notions can be fused into one and that space as such is first generated by the…

One reason to think that names have a predicate-type semantic value is that they naturally occur in count-noun positions: ‘The Michaels in my building both lost their keys’; ‘I know one incredibly sharp Cecil and one that's incredibly dull’. Predicativism is the view that names uniformly occur as predicates. Predicativism flies in the face of the widely accepted view that names in argument position are referential, whether that be Millian Referentialism, direct-reference theories, or even Fregean Descriptivism. But names are predicates in all of their occurrences; they…

This article offers a new argument for the claim that there can be nondegenerate objective chance in a deterministic world. Using a formal model of the relationship between different levels of description of a system, the article shows how objective chance at a higher level can coexist with its absence at a lower level. Unlike previous arguments for the level-specificity of chance, the present argument shows, in a precise sense, that higher-level chance does not collapse into epistemic probability, despite higher-level properties supervening on lower-level ones. The article demonstrates that…

I mentioned to a colleague the other day that the first issue of FPQ was nearing publication, and she welcomed the news with the comment that her state requires new publication to be Open Access, joking, “I’ll have to publish everything with FPQ.” Of course, we can’t place all our works in Open Access journals, as not every essay easily fits into the few no-fee Open Access publishers in Philosophy (and there are too few). The obvious alternative is to satisfy the requirements of Open Access publication with self-archiving, but some self-archiving mechanisms seem…

Kathryn Pogin, a philosophy grad student at Northwestern University, has written an open letter in response to an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education by Northwestern professor Laura Kipnis on ‘sexual paranoia’ in higher education. The article – which you can access without bumping up its readership stats here – discusses the case of Northerwestern professor Peter Ludlow at some length. With respect to that case, Pogin comments: In your article you write, “The professor sued various colleagues, administrators, and a former grad student he previously…

I can think of many philosophers, including some notable women and feminist scholars, who would offer excellent contributions to this anthology editor’s Call for Abstracts (from this site): Idols & Mysteries: Atheists and their Sophisticated Respondents It is often claimed by liberal theologians (Terry Eagleton, Gavin Hyman, Marcus Borg, Denys Turner, John Haught, etc) and popular writers (Karen Armstrong, David Bentley Hart, Marcus Borg, etc) that atheists misconstrue religion. One common accusation is that atheists reject the idolatrous god of conservative theology but not the…

Some important points are raised in this post over at Up@Night about Peter Railton’s Dewey Lecture. I’ve also been noticing that Railton didn’t just give a talk about depression in philosophy. He used depression as an example while making a bigger point. And it’s occurred to me to be concerned that, as a discipline, it is all too easy for us to hear only the elements of Railton’s message that are most comfortable for us to hear, and/or relatively easy for us to act upon without challenging too much of the status quo. Railton’s lecture came in an…

From Amy Ferrer: At its meeting in November, the APA board of officers approved a proposal from the task force on diversity and inclusion to create a travel assistance fund for philosophers of color. The fund will subsidize travel for philosophers of color who would otherwise find it challenging to participate in APA divisional meetings and other APA-sponsored conferences. The fund is supported exclusively by donations. Donate to the new APA Travel Assistance Fund for Philosophers of Color! To help get the new fund off the ground, APA member Janice Dowell and the Marc Sanders Foundation have…

The Brown Philosophy Department is pleased to announce a call for applications for the Summer Immersion Program in Philosophy at Brown University. SIPP@Brown is a two-week residential program for members of traditionally underrepresented groups in philosophy, including women and students of color. This year's program will run from May 31, 2015 to June 13, 2015 and will feature seminars taught by Brown faculty and the SIPP@Brown research conference. Students will have travel and lodging expenses covered and will receive a $500 stipend. More information is available…

CFP: Philosophy of Race and WiPhi Wireless Philosophy (WiPhi) is an online project that introduces people to the practice of philosophy by making videos that are freely available in a form that is entertaining, interesting, and accessible to people with no background in the subject. This Spring WiPhi hopes to release a series of about 8-10 videos on topics in Philosophy of Race. For this series, we are looking for introductory-level videos like "Introduction to Philosophy of Race," "What is Race?" and "Race and Identity." We hope to bring our audience into…

Perspectives on Gender October 24th-25th, 2014University of California, Irvinewww.perspectivesongender.comIn light of recent national attention given to the status of women in thefield of philosophy, this conference aims to promote open andmulti-disciplinary discussion of issues related to gender. We plan toexchange views on a variety of topics organized under our conferencethemes of gender and knowledge, gender and social justice, gender andscience, and gender and discrimination. Central goals of the conferenceare to encourage discussion in the face of disagreement and a commitmentto…

Empathy is a rather faint concept. Scientists do not agree what it exactly involves and they haven’t succeeded yet to define it clearly. For this blog that’s not important. Let’s say that empathy is feeling what someone else feels; that it is a kind of feeling that makes that one understands and feels the emotions of another person, because one imagines the situation he or she is in. Then one gets the same emotion as the other, although usually in a lesser degree. One sees that the other is sad or just happy, which makes that you feel sad or happy as well. It’s the same for other…

Once I talked here about some negative effects of communicating via the Internet. Especially in the on line social media, direct physical contact is usually absent. We do not see each other; we do not hear each other. The only thing we do with the other is exchanging texts and often pictures, too. However, these pictures usually present a positive image of us. We don’t show what we don’t like. Moreover pictures are static. So, we don’t show facial expressions and emotions to our conversation partners, and we don’t see theirs. Let alone that we shake hands or hug. As a result we tend…

Group intentionIn my last blog I concluded that what we do is not always what we want to do, even if we have a choice. In view of this we can say that a group can be responsible for what it does, while its members aren’t, or at least they are not liable for what the group does. In former blogs I have shown that Hannah Arendt talks here about a collective responsibility. I don’t want to repeat the discussion in my older blogs about it but throw some new lights on it.The idea of group responsibility or collective responsibility is widely accepted. It has also a legal basis. It often happens…

Already several times in these blogs I have talked about group intentions. A group intention was seen as a kind of agreement of several persons about doing something together. We could call this a joint commitment, for instance as Margaret Gilbert does. In such a joint commitment we as individuals have the same intention as we have as a group. If we as a group want to walk together, usually it means that I want to walk with you and you want to walk with me (this case is often discussed by Gilbert). Or if we want to paint the house together, the normal sense is that I want to paint a part and…

Many readers of these blogs will have heard about the difficult economic situation of Greece. Most inhabitants of this country want to get rid of the austere measures taken for improving the economy and imposed by the countries of the euro zone and the International Monetary Fund. Therefore most Greeks have voted for parties that want to renegotiate the conditions for getting aid from these institutions. But what measures do the Greeks want to take themselves? Actually I don’t know so the case that I discuss here is pure fiction but it might be real.Suppose that the Greek government wants…

Event Details This roundtable explores the relation between political theory and its impact. The first aim is to consider the distinct challenges that the 'impact agenda' in higher education poses for political theorists and how these might be addressed. A second aim is to examine the impact of political theory in a wider sense: What is the value of political theory -- and what would be lost without it? Should political theory be relevant and, if so, how? The roundtable will take a Question Time-like format and expected to consider a diversity of different approaches drawn from academia and…

In this post I covered Acts I and II of the John Stewart/Seth Rollins feud. In Act III Seth Rollins went on TMZ Hollywood Sports to respond to Stewart's promo: Then, Act II, Rollins upped the ante by showing up on Stewart's own turf: And, finally, the denouement. And I must say that Stewart's appearance on WWE's Monday Night Raw was certainly my moment of Zen: I love how Seth Rollins' flunkies laughed at his jokes and he told them to shut up whenever they hammed it up too much. Really first-rate, classic heel behavior. I can't quite figure out why Randy Orton was the…

This review by York University's Daniel F.J. Siksay is pretty gratifying. If you can't make it past the pay-wall and want a copy, just e-mail me and I'll send you one. Helping Mark Allan Ohm translate Garcia's magnum opus was probably the second hardest thing (after caring for a newborn) I've yet done, and it's tremendously validating to get a pat on the shoulder as well as to see that other people agree with me that it was not time wasted. To be clear, if you had to translate a one hundred seventy thousand plus word metaphysics tome from its original French, you could…

A new post by Emily about how talent is overrated here. It's an interesting synchronicity to read that post after reading Peter Railton's recent APA Presidential address, specifically his remarks on the cult of smartness in philosophy: How did smartness get to be so central in evaluation in a discipline that is supposed to be seeking knowledge and wisdom? And what is it doing t o us as students, teachers, colleagues, and researchers to allow this culture to persist? What are the full costs of this culture, in which we all to some degree participate, even if only passively? Sarah-Jane…

I'm probably the last person in the world to see this, but it's pretty cool. Here's WWE Superstar Seth Rollins calling out John Stewart: And here's Stewart cutting a pretty credible promo in response: I wish Stewart hadn't broken kayfabe with the balsa wood schtick, but it's still pretty credible overall. He even cites a gimmick match at the end. I'm praying this goes somewhere.

One of the central axes in Heidegger scholarship involves the extent to which one can make sense of the following deeply weird passages from Paragraph 44 of Being and Time: “There is” [“gibt es”] truth only insofar as Da-sein is and as long as it is. Beings are discovered only when Da-sein is, and only as long as Da-sein is are they disclosed. Newton’s laws, the law of contradiction, and any truth whatsoever, are true only as long as Da-sein is. Before there was any Da-sein, there was no truth; nor will there be any after Da-sein is no more. For in such a case truth as…

Call For Papers – Journal of Philosophical Investigations – University of Tabriz The journal of Philosophical Investigations accepts articles on the following topics: Metaphysics (Epistemology & Ontology) Applied Philosophy (philosophy of art, philosophy of religion, philosophy of ethics…) Islamic Philosophy Comparative philosophy All contents of this Journal can be downloaded for free (Open access ) Most Visited Articles The Place of Ethics in Heidegger’s Thought and Heidegger’s Position on Ethics Hermeneutical phenomenology survey of…

What is the Creative Act? – Gilles Deleuze (1987) Description (You Tube): This 45 minute talk at a conference in 1987 on the “act of creation” in cinema is perhaps the most intimate capture of Gilles Deleuze on film besides the Abécédaire interview. Gilles Deleuze speaks continuously and fluidly in a raspy but gentle and sincere voice that betrays much reverence for the work of figures such as Bresson and Kurosawa, particularly as concerns what Deleuze claims to be an absolute need of theirs to adapt the works of Shakespeare and Dostoevsky for film. Other figures discussed…

A CALL FOR PAPERS: The Public & the Private Accepting papers for the Graduate Student Conference at the Catholic University of America, School of Philosophy. Listed below is information about the conference and a call for papers. Luke Russell Co-Chair Graduate Student Conference Catholic University of America A CALL FOR PAPERS The Public and The Private A Graduate Student Conference in Philosophy Catholic University of America March 20 & 21, 2015 The distinction between the public and the private has interested philosophers from Plato to Augustine, and from early modern political…

One of the central concerns people often express about longevity science is the worry that science might just extend the number of years we live in a frail, disabled state at the end of life. Our goal should be to "add life to years, rather than simply adding (unhealthy) years to a long life".The good news is that an aging intervention would most likely address exactly that concern. The bad news is that the current approach of the biomedical sciences (what I call "negative biology"), by striving to tackle each specific disease of aging, is doing *precisely* what we all don't want- extending…

For the past 15 years I have been working on my book titled Biologically Modified Justice, which is an examination of some of the ethical and social implications of the genetic revolution. I was thrilled to learn this week that Cambridge University Press has agreed to publish this book. This project has been a true (and lengthy!) labour of love. Now that I am in the final stretch of completing it I thought I would share some reflections on the challenges and joys of writing an interdisciplinary book over so many years.The book develops a series of ideas, insights and arguments I have…

This morning I happened to be reading an article from a 1970s issue of Ethics when I was struck by the difference in length and reliance on citation/notes typical of articles in the journal from 40 years ago. So I decided to compare the Jan 2015, 2005, 1995, 1985 and 1975 issues of the journal to get a sense of how philosophical articles in the journal have transformed over that time. Here is what it looks like [I'm assuming one page length then = one page now]:1975: average size of article is 13 pages with 17 references/notes.1985: 14 pages and 25 notes1995: 22 pages and 47 notes2005: 33…

I am currently writing a commissioned article (for OUP's Oxford Handbook on Virtue) on virtue epistemology and democracy. In this first blog post I want to briefly outline the basic framing of the exercise, at least as I have it worked out so far.Very General Frame: virtue ethics has a PR problem when it comes to democracy. It is typically associated with anti-democratic ideals, and its main historical proponents (namely Plato and Aristotle) criticized democracy. This article aspires to show how the virtue ethicist’s focus on what kind of person we should be can yield valuable insights for…

I posted this on my FB and any academics currently not FB friends that wish to send along their answers can email me. thanksNon-scientific poll for philosophers and theorists who teach on topics like global justice, equality, democracy, freedom, etc.Question #1.When you reflect upon the way you frame with subject matter you teach, is there an apparent "Negative Worldview" (humanity is heading towards the dumps) or "Positive Worldview" (humanity's prospects are improving and will likely continue to do so) perspective that you have?Question #2.If you answered "yes" to number 1, please briefly…

A word about Marquette's attempt to fire John McAdams. One thing (among many) that bothers me is that Dean Holz's letter reveals a double standard. In the second paragraph he charges McAdams with trying to "silence the less-powerful" but nowhere in the letter does he voice any concern at all about the undergraduate--who is the less powerful person in the instructor-student relationship. Here

Every week there's another appalling story about the way college campuses deal with sexual misconduct. A Rolling Stone investigation of UVA shows that on some campuses there's not much of a response even if a student complains of being gang raped by seven men at a frat party. Among many astonishing details in the story: there were 38 allegations of sexual assault in a recent one year period at

Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift ask an interesting question about conferring advantage on children in their new book Family Values. We do all sorts of things that confer advantage, from reading kids bedtime stories to sending them to private schools. All these things get in the way of fair equality of opportunity, they say, giving children a leg up just because they happen to be born into

The Radio 3 The Verb programme, in which I discuss pseudo-profundity (with some analytic vs continental philosophy discussion), is repeated tomorrow night at 10pm GMT on Radio 3. It will be availabe for a week on bbc radio iplayer. Below is my old post concerning that programme. Link to programme website here.Here is a quote from Baudrillard that Prof Paul Taylor chose for the Radio 3 programme we recorded to be broadcast tonite at 10pm (I am talking about pseudo-profundity and bullshit and pointing a finger at some post-modern thinkers - listen here for a week [I am on from about…

My latest CFI blog post...Here's the text from my talk at the British Academy in London tonight (I am one of six panellists that also include Rebecca Goldstein. I wonder what she'll say? The event is called 'What's the point of philosophy?' ) As I’m both the author of several popular philosophy books - including three philosophy books for children - and also editor of the Royal Institute of Philosophy journal THINK which is aimed at the general public, I thought I would talk a little about why I think engaging young people with philosophy, especially in the classroom, might be a good…

Here is a post for the philosophers of religion amongst you. Can we rule out an evil god on the grounds that the world is not nearly evil enough? Of course we can. But then why can’t we similarly rule out a good god on the grounds that the world isn’t nearly good enough? Back in 2011 I debated philosopher and Christian apologist William Lane Craig on the existence of God (link). I presented the evidential problem of evil as my main argument against the existence of God. In particular, I pointed out that, for almost the entire two hundred thousand year sweep of human history, one…

CFI UK events at Oxford Literary Festival 2015 (March)Saturday 21 MarchChristopher FrenchAnomalistic Psychology: Exploring Paranormal Belief and Experience2pm / Oxford Martin School: Lecture Theatre / £12Psychology professor Christopher French explains why some people think they have been abducted by aliens or that they have seen a ghost. He looks at the reasons why belief in the paranormal has been reported in every known society since the dawn of time, and wonders whether there is any room for superstition in modern science. Reports of ghosts and alien encounters grab the headlines, but…

Advocates of epistemic deliberative democracy point to deliberations’ propensity to track the truth. Could someone please explain to me what truth there is to track on political matters, which by their very nature are political because no one can agree on a truth that would adjudicate the matter? This seems folly from top to bottom.

When I was a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin in the 1990s, I was an occasional guest host on a public affairs program of the local PBS station. In 1997 I interviewed the philosopher Richard Rorty. This afternoon, with the help of Emory graduate student Karen McCarthy, I finally got around to digitizing it. Then we uploaded it to YouTube. It’s kind of eery watching it again. So many of the issues Rorty and I discussed are still with us today in the clash of cultures between religion and secularism, attempts at democratization in the Middle East versus the…

The conservative / neoliberal attack on public sector enterprises, namely the United States Postal Service, has worked so well that now I, a leftie, am hating the US Postal Service. They are clearly understaffed and so I see mail carriers trying to deliver the goods as late as 8 p.m. God bless them. But when I want a package delivered on time — or delivered at all (first world problem) — they are no where to be found And if during a lull time I get through to customer service in under 20 minutes, I get a non-answer. And so, personally, I’ll go with a privatized…

Purging all the detritus in my home office, I wonder whether it’s time to get rid of my 4-volume Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Surely with the new online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy this is just taking up shelf space. But I do love this one entry, even though I completely disagree with it, because it is quite funny: (from The Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Nothing is an awe-inspiring yet essentially undigested concept, highly esteemed by writers of an existentialist tendency, but by most others regarded with axiety, nausea, or panic. Nobody seems to know how to deal with it (he…

New Testament ethics holds that loving (God and human neighbor, at least, but maybe the rest of creation as well) is sufficient for fulfilling moral obligations. This could be taken in weaker and stronger ways. The weaker view is that: Necessarily, anyone who fails morally fails in loving all. And "necessarily" might not even be metaphysical modality: it might be something "nomically necessarily", or "necessarily in light of God's commands". But there are stronger readings, such as: Necessarily, every moral failure constitutes a failure in loving all. For instance, take someone who steals. To…

Some time in the fall, Ted Poston asked me how I thought one should model the force of multiple arguments for the existence of God in a Bayesian setting. There are difficulties. For instance, when we discover a valid argument, what we are discovering is the necessary truth that if the premises are true, the consequent is as well. But necessary truths should have probability one. And it's hard to model learning things that have probability one. Moreover, the premises of the arguments are typically not something we are sure of. At the time, I suggested that we conditionalize on the contingent…

If mathematical realism is true, there is an actual infinite. The best alternatives to mathematical realism require the possibility of an actual infinite. So, probably, an actual infinite is possible. What needs justifying is (2). Here, I say that the best alternative to mathematical realism is either fictionalism or some version of structuralism. Structuralism says that mathematics describes possible structures. But if there cannot be an actual infinite, then there is no possible structure that is described by arithmetic. On the other hand, fictionalism is very problematic when it is…

My being seated now is causally explained by my having sat down. Suppose that my being seated now is an essential property of me. Then, had I not sat down, I wouldn't have existed. So my very existence would have counterfactually depended on my own causal activity. But that would absurdly make me be something too much like a causa sui. This seems to generalize into an argument for a general principle: No property that counterfactually depends on an entity's own non-essential causal activity can be essential to that entity. I needed to specify that the relevant causal activity is…

The modal profile of an object tells us which worlds the object exists in and what it consists of in those worlds.The unrestricted modal profiles (UMP) thesis says that for any map f that assigns to some worlds w a concrete object f(w) in w and that assigns nothing to other worlds, there is a possible concrete object Of such that Of exists in all and only the worlds w to which f assigns an object and has the property that in w, Of is wholly composed of f(w) (or of parts of f(w) that compose f(w)).One can think of UMP as the next step after unrestricted composition (UC) which holds that for…

Recently I read two interesting pieces that I'd like to connect with each other. One is Peter Railton's Dewey Lecture to the American Philosophical Association, in which he describes his history of depression. The other is Oliver Sacks's New York Times column about facing his own imminent death. One of the inspiring things about Sacks's work is that he shows how people with (usually neurological) disabilities can lead productive, interesting, happy lives incorporating their disabilities and often even turning aspects of those disabilities into assets. (In his recent column, Sacks relates how…

Cultural moral relativism is the view that what is morally right and wrong varies between cultures. According to normative cultural moral relativism, what varies between cultures is what really is morally right and wrong (e.g., in some cultures, slavery is genuinely permissible, in other cultures it isn't). According to descriptive cultural moral relativism, what varies is what people in different cultures think is right and wrong (e.g., in some cultures people think slavery is fine, in others they don't; but the position is neutral on whether slavery really is fine in the cultures that think…

April 2, I'll be a critic at a Pacific APA author-meets-critics session on Quassim Cassam's book Self-Knowledge for Humans. (Come!) In the last chapter of the book, Cassam argues that self-knowledge is not intrinsically valuable. It's only, he says, derivatively or instrumentally valuable -- valuable to the extent it helps deliver something else, like happiness. I disagree. Self-knowledge is intrinsically valuable! It's valuable even if it doesn't advance some other project, valuable even if it doesn't increase our happiness. Cassam defends his view by objecting to three possible arguments…

Human moral systems are designed, or evolve and grow, with human beings in mind. So maybe it shouldn't be too surprising if they would break apart into confusion and contradiction if radically different intelligences enter the scene. This, I think, is the common element in Scott Bakker's and Peter Hankins's insightful responses to my January posts on robot or AI rights. (All the posts also contain interesting comments threads, e.g., by Sergio Graziosi.) Scott emphasizes that our sense of blameworthiness (and other intentional concepts) seems to depend on remaining ignorant of the physical…

This is a reworked first section of a chapter for a nursing textbook. I am trying to say something general about knowledge without stumbling into an account of the last 50 years of anglo-american epistemology. This version mentions Gettier’s criticism of the traditional model of knowledge (as justified true belief) but does not draw the obvious conclusion (that the JTB analysis is false). In the context, I hope this works, is not too misleading.The value of knowledgeWhy should nurses aim to have knowledgeof their subject? What is the valueof knowledge? Exercise: Think about this question…

So here I am ill in bed with a week-long cold trying to keep up with work/the world on an iPad and tactical visits to campus to give a lecture or attend meetings when necessary though struggling with rather less wit than I would like. Everything seems to take a long time to think through. No exercise of judgement is instinctive. Drafting text is very slow and lumpen. No thoughts are simply helpfully offered up by my lower consciousness.The sense that one is not quite ‘there’ is an odd one. Towards the end of his life my father sometimes struggled badly with short term memory, constantly…

The 2 minute after conference pop video from last year’s Philosophers’ Rally at Radboud University Nijmegen seems to be up on YouTube.I tend to shy away from audio or video recordings of myself (I do not mind pictures). I think it may be because there is something golem-like about them. What on earth was the figure who looks a bit like me (or the voice that does not sound at all like mine but somehow is) thinking or feeling last year?

This is the whole of a short article published in Splijtstof, the student philosophy journal at Radboud University, Nijmegan to coincide with the Philosophers' Rally 2014. I assume that they would no longer mind it being posted in accordance, I guess, with the green standard of public access.Who are we? We learn and teach words in certain contexts, and then we are expected, and expect others, to be able to project them into further contexts. Nothing insures that this projection will take place (in particular, not the grasping of universals nor the grasping of book of rules), just as…

Not many phrases and ideas from recent philosophy have made it out into common parlance. (It will be interesting to see whether Tom Stoppard will succeed in getting ‘hard problem’ onto the lips of those middle class business men and women who now ride on the Clapham Omnibus.) But one phrase and idea that would have been familiar at least to panellists on Radio 4’s much lamented show ‘Stop the Week’ is Gilbert Ryle’s category mistake or category ‘howler’ in his The Concept of Mind [Ryle 1949 / 2009].Ryle argues that accounts of intelligent action which postulate additional…

In this installment of Symbols & Symbolism, we look at a reading from Albert G. Mackey’s Encyclopedia of Freemasonry, on the Ashlar – a symbol familiar to every individual made a mason. More installments are available here under Symbols & Symbolism, and on YouTube. “Freestone as it comes out of the of the quarry.” – Bailey. In Speculative Masonry we adopt the ashlar in two different states, in the Apprentice’s Degree. The Rough Ashlar, or stone in its rude and unpolished condition, is emblematic of man in his natural state – ignorant,…

BRYCE ON NONPROFITS - Particularly in financial management. (Click for AUDIO VERSION) To use this segment in a Radio broadcast or Podcast, send TIM a request. In 2014, a Vancouver Masonic Temple suffered through the embarrassment of an embezzlement of nearly $800,000 by its Treasurer. The Treasurer belonged to a Building Fund which housed various Masonic Lodges and youth groups. The misappropriation was detected accidentally only when the Temple failed to pay its real estate taxes. Charges were pressed against the Treasurer who was sentenced to three years and seven months in prison, plus…

At last, the little project is complete. After months (and years) of conceiving, studying, plotting, writing and then assembling my little endeavor into the Great Work has come into the world. I humbly submit to you my work: The Apprentice, The World and the Universe as One A Treatise on the First Degree of Freemasonry The Apprentice by Gregory Stewart ISBN-13: 978-0986204104 This follow up book to my 2010 project Masonic Traveler – Essays and Commentary is a different approach to understanding the importance and meaning behind the First Degree of Freemasonry. Taking the approach from…

Lone Star Grand Guild Emblem One of the problems in Freemasonry is a problem that is indigenous to most large, prestigious organizations, societies and politics. It is that these prominent groups attract leaders who are all about gaining the position of leadership and little about improving or growing the group. We call these people medal or title chasers. They get to be top leader not by what they do but who they know, by favors and even bribery. There is an old saying: “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The fact that leadership positions in these groups…

From Albert G. Mackey’s Encyclopedia of Freemasonry, this installment of Symbols & Symbolism presents his exploration of what the term Brother and Brotherhood means. Look for more installments on Symbols & Symbolism here, and on YouTube. Brother The term which Freemasons apply to each other. Freemasons are Brethren, not only by common participation of the human nature, but as professing the same faith; as being jointly engaged in the same labors, and as being united by a mutual covenant or tie, whence they are also emphatically called “Brethren of the Mystic Tie.”…

I just read an interesting and thought-provoking argument from Dana Kay Nelkin [1] to the effect that psychopaths – understood here as agents which are morally blind in a particular way – could not be cruel, no matter what they do to people. I’m worried that this argument is too cautious in its application of that term, but in order to express my worry I’ll need to first talk about responsibility generally. I’ve always thought that there are three kinds of responsibility discussed in Gary Watson’s seminal “Two Faces of Responsibility” [2]: the attributive kind, the aretaic…

Can duties harm us? Can being obligated to do something of itself make a person worse off, at least sometimes? Duties and obligations – or the conditions which trigger preexisting duties and obligations – are often greeted with resignation by those who have them just as if they were bad news, at any rate. Even if Yann quite likes his job teaching philosophy and understands that he may be assigned administrative duties as a condition of employment, he might also be quite disappointed when he remembers all the graduate student applications he must read tomorrow, just when he was hoping to…

There’s a kind of pragmatism, call it Carnapian pragmatism, that concerns the adoption of languages. More specifically, Carnapian pragmatism, as I am using the term, combines two theses: (1) there are no a priori rationally indispensable languages, and (2) the adoption of a language ought to depend on the weight of the various benefits that speaking that language confers on one and one’s community. (1), rules out, for example, the a priori indispensability of a language involving material substances that persist through time and underly change. That is, of course, compatible…

As some of you know, I have been on hunger-strike this week as a small token of solidarity with the detainees held without trial at the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp. During this week I have taken on only water, non-calorific flavoured water, and small amounts of salt. It’s been quite the experience. There’s plenty to hate about being on hunger-strike. The weakness, the waves of nausea, the occasional vomiting, the broken sleep, the frustrating sense that one’s life is on hold, the coming and going of mental clarity, and, of course, the intense unabating hunger. But there have also been…

“Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden interpretiert; es kommt darauf an, sie zu verändern.” – Karl Marx, These über Feuerbach. A 2009 article in the Miami Herald describes the policy at the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp library.[1] The policy is outlined on a slip of paper that was returned to a Pentagon lawyer along with the book he tried to donate to the library—an Arabic translation of Noam Chomsky’s Interventions. The book was refused; the slip of paper offers some explanation why. The document divides potential Guantanamo literature into two classes:…

What do we say when we say that someone has “will”? Why is it a compliment? The philosophical origins of this theme allow better understanding of the current uses of the term. Recent concept, themed by Descartes as a metaphysical plane as infinite power by which man is like God. Kant will move this concept ethically: the will is connected to duty and the moral law. It is the tool of practical reason. Schopenhauer will make the blind force exerted on all beings. Psychology will give a weaker sense, the sense of thoughtful and fully conscious form of activity. According to the…

Each woman is has a seducer. Her happiness is only to meet him (Kierkegaard in The Journal of the Seducer) Modern Love has strange forms. Meetic.com or Match.com, precursors of the online dating had dematerialized the date. An application again from the United States, available on Facebook, Tinder, took some magnitude (750 million reviewed in day) seems to bring back a disruption of the meeting. What does this success? Is it an epiphenomenon or can it be analyzed as paradigmatic relationships with others today? Tinder and modern courtship Tinder with the gallant court practiced since the…

After New York, London and Madrid, so this is Paris, through the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which has been hit by terrorism. “Why? “Is the question everybody is wondering. What objectives pursued cowards who attacked these designers? The destruction of democracy. So this is an opportunity to revisit the foundations of democracy, which makes the superiority of this system over all others and ways to protect it. Democracy and its enemies Returning to facts: 2 people attacked the journal writing and another attacked a Jewish customers supermarket. The toll was heavy: 17…

Confession of a Child of the Century is the only novel written by Afred de Musset, a french romantic. This novel tells the tumultuous story of Musset and Sand, who had a stormy passion and devastating. Sand later deliver his own version of their relationship in Him and Her. Beyond the biopic aspect, through the hopes, disappointments, morbid jealousy, fits of violence naratteur of this confession is a book with a thesis on the romantic, considered the disease of the century, causing the loss of the generation. This generation was born on the…

Poetic Quotes by Charles Baudelaire: We would be insulting to introduce the most famous symbolist poet. Baudelaire‘s poetry is not only a topic of literary studies, but also philosophical, as shown by Sartre in his book on Baudelaire. Recall, however, few works of this poet: - Flowers of Evil - The Artificial Paradise - Poems (Le Spleen de Paris) Baudelaire and wisdom: - “Wisdom is knowing people his loneliness and isolation among the crowd” - “Enjoy the crowd is an art” - “Whatever may be the reality outside of myself if it helps me to live, to feel that I…

[Revised entry by Michael Tooley on March 3, 2015. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, alternate.html, notes.html] The epistemic question posed by evil is whether the world contains undesirable states of affairs that provide the basis for an argument that makes it unreasonable to believe in the existence of God....Continue reading . . . News source: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

I am happy to announce a forthcoming new volume from the Blackwell Companions to Philosophy Series: A Companion to Experimental Philosophy. It is edited by Justin Sytsma and myself and features over forty chapters from leading philosophers, psychologists and cognitive scientists from several countries across three continents. These chapters detail the application of empirical methods to philosophical questions across major sub-disciplines including the philosophy of action, moral and political philosophy, philosophy of mind, epistemology, philosophy of language, metaphysics, logic, and…

2015.03.04 : View this Review Online | View Recent NDPR Reviews Tad M. Schmaltz (ed.), Efficient Causation: A History, Oxford University Press, 2014, 372pp., $35.00 (pbk), ISBN 9780199782178. Reviewed by John Grey, Michigan State University Philosophers are drawn to causation like moths. The reason seems to be that causation is one of the precious few relations fit to serve as explanation; in many domains, to understand a phenomenon just is to know its cause. How much better, then, to understand causation itself! The problem -- well, one problem -- is that there are so very many wildly…

With growing numbers of people developing gastrointestinal sensitivities to gluten (or Celiac disease) and many more wanting to lose weight, more and more are turning gluten-free […] Continue reading at The Mindful Word journal of engaged living [http://www.themindfulword.org]

She was born out of the fire. Humankind had been on a search for a true leader. There had been many that came and left, but […] Continue reading at The Mindful Word journal of engaged living [http://www.themindfulword.org]

Here we are in a new year, 2015. Over the holidays I was vividly aware of the true message that Jesus brought. His birth brought […] Continue reading at The Mindful Word journal of engaged living [http://www.themindfulword.org]

Rituals have largely been lost in the Western world, and the ones that remain are most commonly connected with birth and death, but there are […] Continue reading at The Mindful Word journal of engaged living [http://www.themindfulword.org]

There is a well-known hypothesis in financial economics, called the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH), that spawns a lot of debate. The EMH states that financial markets are ‘informationally efficient’. In other words: a financial asset’s market price always incorporates and reflects all available relevant information. Hence no investor can consistently use such information to find stocks that earn him above average returns. After all: such information is already reflected in the asset’s price; so if there is a lot of ‘positive’ information about the company, the stock’s market…

Ralph Waldo Emerson said: ‘Always do what you are afraid to do.’ And this rule seems a reasonably good guide for self-improvement. Because it turns out that people are often afraid to do the things they are least familiar with. Whether is approaching a girl in a club, giving a speech to 50 people, or setting up a business: things make us feel anxious because we do not know what we will experience. In such cases the anxiety will often push you away from doing the thing, thereby still leaving you clueless about what you will experience, or even increasing your future…

A while ago, I had a discussion with a friend of mine: we were talking about how people from different cultures interacted with each other. My friend claimed – and he was quite serious about it – that ‘All Moroccans are aggressive’. ‘How do you know?’ I asked him, ‘Have you met all Moroccans?’. ‘No’, he said, ‘but the ones I’ve met, were all aggressive’. Well that seems discriminating, doesn’t it? But while he said this, an idea popped into my mind: Karl Popper’s falsification theory. And I came to…

This is a plea against humanity and its deeply ingrained narrow-mindedness. For as long as we can remember it has been the same old story: people have different beliefs –> people believe that only their beliefs are true –> people feel endangered by other people’s beliefs –> people find it okay to attack those who have different beliefs. This is the ever repeating cycle of human ignorance: a cycle we – apparently – cannot escape. Just when we think we’ve figured it all out, just when we believe peace is within reach, a new group of people…

Economics explains how people interact within markets to accomplish certain goals. People; not robots. And people are creatures with desires, animalistic urges that guide them into making conscious – but also unconscious – decisions. That sets them apart from robots, which act solely upon formal rules (If A, then B, etc.). But this difference between humans and robots shouldn’t have to be a problem, right? Not if economics takes into account the fact that humans are biological creatures who (might) have got a free will, an observation which makes their actions undetermined…

We don’t talk about ghosts because we see ghosts. It’s the other way around: we see ghosts because we talk about ghosts. We—I mean human beings—have always told ghost stories, passing them down the generations in various forms—in folklore, myth, and religion, and in art and entertainment. The ghost is a living symbol of the perennial human sense of transcendence, the feeling that there is something in our world and in us that is beyond the merely contingent and temporary, which expresses itself in the cultural sacredness of life, which also of course means the…

251. Doesn’t this mean: I shall proceed according to this belief unconditionally, and not let anything confuse me? 252. But it isn’t just that I believe in this way that I have two hands, but that every reasonable person does. 253. At the foundation of well-founded belief lies belief that is not founded. 254. Any 'reasonable’ person behaves like this. 255. Doubting has certain characteristic manifestations, but they are only characteristic of it in particular circumstances. If someone said that he doubted the existence of his hands, kept looking at them from all sides, tried…

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 236. If someone said “The earth has not long been…” what would he be impugning? Do I know? Would it have to be what is called a scientific belief? Might it not be a mystical one? Is there any absolute necessity for him to be contradicting historical facts? or even geographical ones? 237. If I say “an hour ago this table didn’t exist”, I probably mean that it was only made later on. If I say “this mountain didn’t exist then”, I presumably mean that it was only formed later on – perhaps…

I have posted a short essay, "On the the pedigree of the 'subset view' of realization", by Jessica Wilson (Professor, University of Toronto) at the Campaign for Better Citation and Credit-Giving Practices in Philosophy. Check it out, as well as the first post I wrote on the "Lewis-Stalnaker-(Sprigge?) theory" of counterfactuals. I'd also like to encourage anyone and everyone to contribute new posts to the Campaign. Are there authors/papers you think haven't received due credit in the literature? Let everyone know!

In light of recent discussions raising questions about citation and credit-giving practices in academic philosophy, I have tentatively launched a new blog, "The Campaign for Better Citation and Credit-Giving Practices in Philosophy", to serve as a forum to share and address systematic problems in these areas. As the blog's Mission Statement makes clear, the blog will NOT function as a forum to post any accusations against particular authors, articles, etc (such things will not be permitted). Instead, the blog is a place where individuals can submit posts arguing that…

[cross-posted at Prosblogion] This is the first installment of a series of interviews I am conducting with academic philosophers about their religious practices. Curiously, there’s relatively little attention for religious practices, with most work in philosophy of religion strongly focusing on beliefs (this is changing thanks to excellent work by Terence Cuneo, Howard Wettstein, Sarah Coakley and others, but this work is still decidedly in the minority). In this series of interviews, I ask philosophers who are religious practitioners—they go to church or temple, pray, utter blessings,…

The following works were either published or uploaded to philpapers by Cocoon contributors during the month of February: Nicholas Joll (2015). Defending Adorno’s Practical Philosophy. International Journal of Philosophical Studies 23 (1):126-140. David Killoren (forthcoming). Robust Moral Realism: An Excellent Religion. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion:1-15. Clayton Littlejohn (forthcoming). Knowledge and Awareness. Analysis. Clayton Littlejohn (forthcoming). A Plea for Epistemic Excuses. In Fabian Dorsch Julien Dutant (ed.), The New Evil Demon Problem. Oxford…

I came across a social media post today on an issue that I've heard people raise serious concerns about before, and which once again speaks to philosophers' problematic citation practices (for more, see here, here, here, and here). Although it's not my place to share who told the story or who the story involves, the general story is (in my experience) a disturbingly familiar one: Philosopher A defends an argument X in year Y. A much more famous philosopher B defends a similar argument several years later. Other philosophers routinely cite B's work, and refer to argument X…

On Valentine’s Day 2015, a day often associated with romance, love and extortionate prices for roses, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) alleged that four friends intended on that day to massacre ordinary shoppers at the Halifax Shopping Centre, located in one of the most eastern parts of Canada. Lest you’re wondering, the RCMP, formed in 1920 isn’t particularly ‘mounted’ much to my surprise … they tend not to police mounted on horses across Canada and within eight of Canada’s ten provinces. Nor for that matter do they for the most part walk around in crisp, red blazers…

Out here in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), we are in the midst of our political elections. They are quite similar to political elections in any major Western democracy, and as such they unfortunately suffer from the same stagnation and disenchantment which we are witnessing worldwide in advanced democracies. Up for grabs in the GTA in October are the posts of Mayor, Town Councillors and Regional Councillors. Elected every four years, these chaps have a big say on what services are provided and how public funds are deployed. In my town of Markham, a dozen or so officials are hoping to be…

It’s an odd question to ask but one that I threw out at a friend who’s quite involved in US foreign policy. His answer was predictable and frankly shallow: ISIS was guilty of mass human rights atrocities and no civilized country could allow for it continue, it had to be stopped. In fact, it had to be destroyed. I couldn’t disagree with what he said. ISIS is a nasty piece of work. Every armed forces has its lunatic fringe, the guys who like killing for its own sake. This is the first armed forces I’ve come across which is proud to advertise its killing of innocent people. Given that…

Living in Toronto now for more than three years, I’ve not yet got my head around two aspects of its retail world. First, that almost everything here is sold at a higher price than in the nearest American city, Buffalo, which according to Google Maps is a mere 99 mile road journey away. Second, that most Torontonians are quite content in paying the difference. There’s actually a third enigma, being how the Toronto Maple Leafs generate so much retail revenue despite having won nothing in almost five decades… but let’s not go there for now. Let’s explore the first conundrum.

Equality is usually seen as the goal of feminism. Yet with women more than a third more likely to go to university than men, and with more female entrants to medicine and law, does this limit the horizon? Should we be championing difference rather than equality? Or is this a dangerous heresy that threatens progress? In this issue of IAI News, activist Finn Mackay, founder of the London Feminist Network confronts the challenges facing feminism today. What goals should feminists adopt? In Feminism at the Crossroads, Mackay asks: is feminism still a radical tool for change? Or does it now only…

Modern feminists are obsessed by the interests of their own kind. Most leading feminist columnists are still getting worked up about the so-called pay gap. But this simply should not be an issue when there are so many other, more pressing problems, such women and domestic violence. Where was feminism on female genital mutilation? For years the headline feminists were just utterly uninterested in it. There was a complete lack of interest in girls in care homes too. We’ve known for years that these awful events were taking place, and did the feminist movement pick up on it? No. It was The…

We live in a society with a powerful aversion to silence; with an anxiety of not having something said, or anything to say. Silence is feared and equated with emptiness, meaninglessness, nothing. Muzak is, of course, omnipresent. Phones and iPods create a bubble of noise around every individual, keeping the outside world out and starving the inner world of space. If the radio or TV falls silent, it suggests a fault, at best, and possibly global disaster. Twenty-four hour news, too, cannot tolerate any gaps. You see it particularly during election campaigns, as we are suffering in the UK at…

There are evil acts and there are evil people. Evil acts are, roughly, ones that involve the intentional infliction of suffering that is significant, undeserved and unnecessary. Those who consistently perform evil acts are evil people. Evil is not a supernatural force that takes possession of people. Neither is it a sequence of genes. An evil person does not have to be motivated by the thought of perpetrating evil. An evil person may act only from what they regard as the best of intentions. Most of the evil acts in the world are the result of simple stupidity: of people holding rationally…

Feminism is at a crossroads. On the one hand, pop stars such as Beyoncé and Miley Cyrus have proudly declared themselves feminists. On the other, feminist writers and activists are subjected to a terrifying barrage of threats and abuse from online commenters. In November 2014, the gender pay gap for all UK employees (full-time and part-time) was the lowest on record. Meanwhile, according to a 2013 survey by the UK government, approximately 85,000 women are raped on average in England and Wales every year. Is feminism still a radical tool for positive change? Or can it only serve to support…

I’ve failed at a lot of things lately. In school (not literally, but I’ve failed myself), at my work, at friendships; the list goes on. I could let my failures surround me and I could submit to that nagging feeling in the back of my head that I’m not good enough, that I can’t be good enough, that I won’t be good enough. But instead of dwelling on thoughts that might not be true, I’m looking at this from a different angle. Sure, I’ve failed. I’ve lost clients and proposals, disappointed people, disappointed myself, and and I’ve come up…

The vast majority of people these days are looking to live a life that doesn’t interfere with the status quo. Others are looking for ways to get rich quick on the internet. They ask “what’s the secret? how can I launch x-for-x in a week’s time without any money, without hiring anyone, and without proper knowledge? how can I do this without failing a million times before I become successful?” Want to know the truth? It’s not pleasant: there is no secret. If you want to get rich and popular by cutting corners, by writing click-bait articles on your…

Keep a record of everything in your life—the big, the small, the bad, the good. One day ten years from now, five years from now, hell, even one year from now, you’ll be able to look back at the way things were and see that all the shit you went through to get to this point was entirely worth it. You will learn from your mistakes, you will see growth. You will surprise yourself. You will realize that not everything happens for a reason but that everything you did, said, and felt has led you to this little apotheosis. You will feel triumphant for one glorious moment; but that moment…

It’s not what you do when the stars shine bright on the paved road that matters, but what you do when you’re down in the dust, when the earth swirls up around you and you feel life’s hands around your neck.

Stay humble. Never stop learning or experimenting. Never become complacent. You’re good at what you do, but there are always ways to improve. Keep your options open. Don’t focus on the negative. Give yourself a break. People matter. Don’t forget who you are. Live a life you’re proud of.

You don’t have to parade around in Gladiator armour waving a sword to take part in something epic. Nor do you have to snog Leonardo Di Caprio on a sinking ship or run around telling people that frankly you don’t give a damn. The term ‘epic’ is often applied to stories and films which are unapologetically dramatic and, let’s face it, too long to sit through without becoming glaringly aware of how uncomfortable your seat is. But epicness has quite another meaning when it comes to your own life story. Your story may already be a successful one. You may already…

Unless you’re a Russian-speaker, you probably won’t know what I’m on about, but the very fact that you chose to read this blog may mean that you’re a Pochemuchka anyhow. There is no direct translation in English for the Russian word Pochemuchka, which makes me think that maybe there aren’t enough of them in the English-speaking world to warrant the word. In essence, a Pochemuchka is a person who constantly asks questions – someone who always wants to know the reason for things. Now we’ve all encountered that child who, whatever your answer to their…

What do you feel like when you buy a Kit-Kat, take a bite and discover there is no wafer? Do you scream and shout about the deviance of said chocolate bar? Do you throw it to the floor in disgust? Do you write to Nestle demanding they send you the missing wafer? No? But why don’t you do that? – after all you bought the blinking thing in the first place because it has a wafer, surely? You actively desired the wafer! Otherwise you’d have plumped for a Cadbury’s Dairy Milk or maybe selected a Yorkie (only if you’re a boy, of course). But no, you have a little smile to…

There are always a million excuses you can make about why you’re not looking after your body or paying more attention to your health. There’s a lack of time, a lack of motivation, and a general unwillingness to change to a healthier, more wholesome lifestyle. After all, broccoli is not as tasty as cake, a glass of wine is more fun than a glass of water, and if you’ve just finished a long day of work you may be too pooped to pop down the gym. If you’re finding it hard to motivate yourself, or to make wise choices when it comes to health, consider whether your focus may,…

If you really think about it, wages just aren’t a fair reflection of the value you provide in the workplace, unless you’re the boss. If you’re working for someone else, the only way for them to make a profit is by paying you less than you’re worth. In order to make any serious money, companies have to pay staff a lesser share of proceeds than they truly deserve – even though frontline staff are usually the ones doing all the hard graft. Traditionally, people have tended to think in this way: company founders are taking most of the risk when they start a business, and…